Focus areas of our spring program 2010 are architecture, design, and photography.

  1. Ecological Urbanism
    From April 2010
    Ecological Urbanism

    Edited by Mohsen Mostafavi, with Gareth Doherty, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

    EUR 39.90 / USD 59.90 / GBP 40.00

    While climate change, sustainable architecture, and green technologies have become increasingly topical, issues surrounding the sustainability of the city are much less developed. The premise of the book is that an ecological approach is urgently needed both as a remedial device for the contemporary city and an organizing principle for new cities. “Ecological Urbanism” approaches the city without any one set of instruments and with a worldview that is fluid in scale and disciplinary approach. Design provides the synthetic key to connect ecology with an urbanism that is not in contradiction with its environment. The book brings together design practitioners and theorists, economists, engineers, artists, policy makers, environmental scientists, and public health specialists, with the goal of reaching a more robust understanding of ecological urbanism and what it might be in the future.

    With contributions by Homi Bhabha, Stefano Boeri, Chuck Hoberman, Rem Koolhaas, Sanford Kwinter, Bruno Latour, Nina-Marie Lister, Mohsen Mostafavi, Matthias Schuler, Sissel Tolaas, Charles Waldheim, among others

    Design: Integral Lars Müller

    16.5 x 24 cm, 640 pages, approx. 1000 illustrations, hardcover (2010)

    ISBN 978-3-03778-189-0, e

  2. Other Space Odysseys: Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan and Alessandro Poli
    From April 2010
    Other Space Odysseys: Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan and Alessandro Poli

    Edited by Giovanna Borasi, Mirko Zardini and the Canadian Centre for Architecture

    English,
    EUR 24.95 / USD 35.00 / GBP 20.00

    French,
    EUR 24.95 / USD 35.00 / GBP 20.00

    This book presents three architectural responses to the idea of journeys through outer space in a future based on technology. After the 1969 moonwalk, Alessandro Poli with Superstudio considered it critical to imagine our environment as connected to outer space. His “Architettura interplanetaria” imagined a form of architecture that could be conceived and realized at the galactic scale. Poli’s “Architettura materiale,” on the other hand, challenged the optimism of journeying so far from our centre and questioned our dependence on technology. 
    NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the site of one of Michael Maltzan’s current projects. His goal is to bridge earthbound scientists with their work at the scale of outer space. Maltzan challenges existing architectural models for scientific research, and proposes a new type of environment to facilitate collaboration. 
    Greg Lynn imagines a virtual challenge to our traditional way of conceiving space. He proposes original ways of thinking about design in relation to gravity and is creating a computer-based simulated environment that will allow a new kind of architectural experimentation. New City is the first such virtual world to be conceived by an architect, and provides an unprecedented geographic representation of our own world.

    This book will bring the reader on many journeys while questioning fundamental assumptions about architecture and space.

    15 × 21 cm, 6 × 8 ¼ in, approx. 160 pages
    approx. 150 illustrations, softcover (2010)

    ISBN 978-3-03778-193-7, e
    ISBN 978-3-03778-194-4, f

  3. Your Chance Encounter
    From April 2010
    Olafur Eliasson
    Your Chance Encounter

    EUR 40.00 / USD 60.00 / GBP 40.00

    The acclaimed Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson developed a sequence of spatial experiments for his Your Chance Encounter exhibition in the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. His piece challenges visitors to move around and get their bearings, and stimulates them to see the museum as a public space for addressing art and reality critically.

    The installations were developed especially for the exhibition. They are arranged in a tight context with the spatial structure of the museum and extend the concept of architecture by the Japanese architecture practice SANAA. Olafur Eliasson does not work only in the museum galleries, but also in the corridors in between and the adjacent courtyards, thus linking the indoor and outdoor areas closely and examining this museum’s unique qualities.

    The artist’s book was created in close co-operation with Olafur Eliasson’s studio. Its elaborate design with an extensive pictorial section offers a comprehensive record of the exhibition and an important analysis of this successful artist’s work. An essay by art historian Eve Blau interprets the exhibition in relation to its surroundings and contrasts the experimental approaches of Olafur Eliasson and SANAA, while curator Hiromi Kurosawa introduces the history and context of the museum in Kanazawa.

    With texts by Eve Blau, Hiromi Kursawa

    24 x 20 cm, 216 pages, approx. 200 illustrations, hardcover (2010)

    ISBN 978-3-03778-211-8, e/jap.

    Olafur Eliasson

    born in 1967 in Copenhagen, Denmark of Icelandic parentage. He attended the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen from 1989 to 1995. He has participated in numerous exhibitions worldwide and his work is represented in public and private collections including the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Deste Foundation, Athens and Tate. Recently he has had major solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and ZKM (Center for Art and Media), Karlsruhe and represented Denmark in the 2003 Venice Biennale. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

    Other works: The basic elements of the weather – water, light, temperature, pressure – are the materials that Olafur Eliasson has used throughout his career. His installations regularly feature elements appropriated from nature – billowing steam replicating a water geyser, glistening rainbows or fog-filled rooms. By introducing ‘natural’ phenomena, such as water, mist or light, into an un specifically cultivated setting, be it a city street or an art gallery, the artist encourages the viewer to reflect upon their understanding and perception of the physical world that surrounds them. This moment of perception, when the viewer pauses to consider what they are experiencing, has been described by Eliasson as ‘seeing yourself sensing’.

    Many of Eliasson’s works explore the relationship between the spectator and object. In Your Sun Machine (1997) viewers entered a room which was empty apart from a large circular hole punctured in the roof. Each morning, sunlight streamed into the space through this aperture, at first creating an elliptical, then a circular outline on the walls and floor. The beam of light shifted across the room as the day progressed. The movement of the ‘sun’ across the room was apparently the central focus of the work, but in observing this, the viewer was reminded of his or her own position as an object, located on earth, spinning through space around the real sun.

    For The Mediated Motion at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria (2001), Eliasson created a sequence of spaces filled with natural materials including water, fog, earth, wood, fungus and duckweed. During their journey through the exhibition, visitors were confronted by a variety of sensory experiences – sights, smells, and textures – which had been precisely articulated by the artist. Eliasson also modified the dominant orthogonal character of the building, including the insertion of a subtly slanting floor, which made visitors become more conscious of the act of movement through space.

  4. Distance and Engagement
    From May 2010
    Alice Foxley, Günther Vogt
    Distance and Engagement
    Landscape Thinking – Model Making

    English,
    EUR 49.90 / USD 74.90 / GBP 39.90

    German,
    EUR 49.90 / USD 74.90 / GBP 39.90

    Günther Vogt and his landscape designers bring a lot of passion to their research and to their search for ideas for transforming undesigned sites or tracts of land into landscapes. They don’t want to depend just on knowledge acquired from books. They venture out into the landscape at all times of the day and year and interrogate what they see there. They make room for art and science in their studies and use the same tools to turn their landscape designs into reality. Most of their “field trips” begin out of curiosity based on something they’ve seen, heard, or read. Against this backdrop, they explore, among other things, fortifications in France, the Upper Rhine in Switzerland, and national parks in England. The results of their “field trips,” research projects, and practical implementations are collected in this publication. “Distance and Engagement” takes up where “Miniature and Panorama” left off and shows not only what Günther Vogt is working on but also, and above all, how he works.

    Design: Integral Lars Müller

    24 x 16.5 cm, 480 pages, approx. 1000 illustrations, hardcover (2010)

    ISBN 978-3-03778-196-8, e
    ISBN 978-3-03778-195-1, g

    Alice Foxley

    Alice Foxley studied architecture in Newcastle and Bath, UK. Employed with Vogt Landscape Architects since 2003.

    Günther Vogt

    Günther Vogt, born 1957, landscape architect. Studied at the Interkantonales Technikum Rapperswil, Switzerland. From 1995 joint owner of Kienast Vogt Partner. Since 2000 owner of Vogt Landscape Architects, Zurich and Munich, since 2008 London. Since 2005 Associate Professor for Landscape Architecture at the ETH, Zurich.

  5. Maharam Agenda
    From May 2010
    Maharam Agenda

    Edited by Michael Maharam

    EUR 59.90 / USD 90.00 / GBP 54.00

    Bekannt geworden als Lieferant von Theatertextilien für den Broadway und darüber hinaus, bereitete Maharam in den sechziger Jahren den Weg für den Einsatz technischer Textilien bei der Raumgestaltung und beliefert heutzutage als Marktführer Architekten und Innenarchitekten mit Textilien. Maharam verfolgt einen ganzheitlichen Designansatz, der eine Vielzahl verschiedener Bereiche wie Architektur, Innenarchitektur, Möbel, Mode, Zubehör, grafische und digitale Medien umfasst. Das Maharam Design Studio beaufsichtigt die Bearbeitung einer umfangreichen Textilkollektion, die von Neuauflagen beliebter Stoffe der berühmtesten multidisziplinären Visionäre des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts bis zu Textilprodukten reicht, die gemeinsam mit Vertretern anderer Disziplinen entworfen werden. So unter anderem in Zusammenarbeit mit -Konstantin Grcic, Hella Jongerius, Maira Kalman, Bruce Mau, Jasper Morrison, Nike und Paul Smith. Dieses Werk bietet einen umfassenden Überblick über Firmen-geschichte, kulturelle Bezugspunkte und Designprojekte. Abstrakte Produktanwendungen werden an den «useless objects» von Jasper Morrison gezeigt.
     

    22 × 28 cm, 8 ¾ × 11 in, 8 ¾ × 11 in, approx. 256 pages, approx. 200 illustrations, hardcover, (2010)

    ISBN 978-3-03778-187-6, e

  6. A World Without Words
    From May 2010
    Jasper Morrison
    A World Without Words

    EUR 16.50 / USD 24.90 / GBP 15.00

    What feeds the inspiration of the designer? Observation. In Jasper Morrison’s col-lection of pictures, the icons of design history meet up with the unassuming objects of everyday life, and curious findings with the archetypes of modernism. Every picture tells a story and creates a new one in juxtaposition with its neighbor – without words, in the language of form.

    Morrison responds to the arbitrariness of form with simplicity and complexity, poetry and humor in a repertoire of compelling designs. “a world without words” is a school of seeing that addresses designers and consumers alike, who wish to explore the -universe of goods.

    11 × 15.5 cm, 4 ¼ × 6 in, 112 pages, 104 illustrations, softcover (2010)

    ISBN 978-3-03778-207-1, e

    Jasper Morrison

    Jasper Morrison was born in London in 1959, and graduated in Design at Kingston Polytechnic Design School and the Royal College of Art in London, with a year at Berlin’s HdK. In 1986 he set up an Office for Design in London. 1994, began a consultancy with Üstra, the Hanover transport authority, designing a bus shelter, and in 1995 the new Hanover tram. In 2001 elected as a Royal Designer for Industry. In 2003 a branch office was opened in Paris. Jasper Morrison Ltd. design for a wide-ranging customers base including: Alessi (Italy), Cappellini (Italy) Flos (Italy), Magis (Italy), Rowenta (France), Vitra, (Switzerland). 2004, began consultancies with Samsung (Korea),  Muji (Japan), Ideal Standard (UK) and Olivetti (Italy). 2005, founding of Super Normal with Naoto Fukasawa. In June 2006, first Super Normal exhibition in Tokyo. 2009 opening of the Jasper Morrison Limited Shop in London.

  7. Findings on Elasticity
    From June 2010
    Findings on Elasticity

    Edited by the Pars Foundation

    EUR 29.90 / USD 49.90 / GBP 27.90

    The second issue in the exciting and experimental cross-disciplinary series “Findings on…” by Astrid van Baalen and Hester Aardse from the pars Foundation is centred on Elasticity in the broadest sense of the word. What happens when one gives a simple rubber band to an architect, historian, choreographer, chemist, artist, mathematician, physicist, economist, anthropologist, and geologist and asks each of them for a statement on elasticity? The economist studies the elasticity of supply and demand of market forces. The architect calculates the elasticity of the steel structure of a building during an earthquake. The anthropologist studies the flow of people returning to their homes in the wake of a natural disaster. “The Pars Foundation” draws researchers out of their specialized niches in order to publish their brilliant, crazy, important, or bewildering results and assembles them in this interdisciplinary volume. “Findings on Elasticity” is the second part of a publication series that together will constitute an atlas of creative thinking. There are no guidelines for the form their contributions must take. It may be images, poems, essays, sketches on coasters, formulas or a piece of sculpture; the editors only ask that a contribution reflect the respondent’s own field as well as his or her passion for the topic.

    20 x 27 cm, 190 pages, 130 illustrations, softcover (2010)

    ISBN 978-3-03778-148-7, e